Landfill Creates Fuel for Garbage Trucks in CA- What’s Maryland going to do about it?

So Arnold Schwarzenegger has set the bar high for the other Governors and asked for zero emissions. T. Boone Pickens is answering the call and helping to provide natural gas to all bus and garbage trucks in California. Methane from garbage dumps is a source of dirty but clean local fuel.

This begs the question- what is our state going to do about it?

In my case- this means Maryland. Our Governor- Martin O’Malley is green and getting greener. Let’s see him learn from California’s example- don’t let politics get in the way. We have green initiatives- can’t we have the MTA switch to natural gas. If not- why not? The Federal government supports clean fuel and pays most of the bill for new buses. Why can’t ours be clean like California’s?

LIVERMORE, CALIF. – Hundreds of trash trucks across California are rumbling down city streets using clean fuel made from a dirty source: garbage. The fuel is derived from rotting refuse that San Francisco and Oakland residents and businesses have been discarding in the Altamont landfill since 1980. Since November, the methane gas created from decaying detritus at the 240-acre landfill has been sucked into tubes and sent into an innovative facility that purifies and transforms it into liquefied natural gas.

http://greenopolis.com – Altamont, California, best known for the Rolling Stones Gimme Shelter concert, now has a new claim to fame- passing gas. Only this time its all good. The Altamont Landfill and Resource Recovery Facility is now the worlds largest landfill to liquefied natural gas facility. With the innovative capture technologies in place, methane- a Greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than CO2- is being turned into a resource. The project represents cross sector collaboration with Waste Management, Linde, and the State of California.The captured methane is processed into liquefied natural gas that is powering 300 Waste Management trucks daily, realizing ultra low carbon emissions from the natural gas and saving all that petro diesel and fine particle pollution to boot. WM is hoping to harvest 13,000 gallons of this fuel a day for their fleet. This is a project grand in concept, innovative leadership and scale. Its a great example of once again closing the loop and transforming waste to resources. This approach will provide green jobs and cleaner air for California and the rest of us.